I

    I owed it to my colleague Glossop that I was in the centre of thesurprising things that occurred that night. By sheer weight ofboredom, Glossop drove me from the house, so that it came aboutthat, at half past nine, the time at which the affair began, I waspatrolling the gravel in front of the porch.

　　It was the practice of the staff of Sanstead House School toassemble after dinner in Mr Abney's study for coffee. The room wascalled the study, but it was really more of a master's commonroom. Mr Abney had a smaller sanctum of his own, reservedexclusively for himself.

　　On this particular night he went there early, leaving me alonewith Glossop. It is one of the drawbacks of the desert-islandatmosphere of a private school that everybody is always meetingeverybody else. To avoid a man for long is impossible. I had beenavoiding Glossop as long as I could, for I knew that he wanted tocorner me with a view to a heart-to-heart talk on Life Insurance.

　　These amateur Life Insurance agents are a curious band. The worldis full of them. I have met them at country-houses, at seasidehotels, on ships, everywhere; and it has always amazed me thatthey should find the game worth the candle. What they add to theirincomes I do not know, but it cannot be very much, and the troublethey have to take is colossal. Nobody loves them, and they mustsee it; yet they persevere. Glossop, for instance, had been tryingto buttonhole me every time there was a five minutes' break in theday's work.

　　He had his chance now, and he did not mean to waste it. Mr Abneyhad scarcely left the room when he began to exude pamphlets andbooklets at every pocket.

　　I eyed him sourly, as he droned on about 'reactionable endowment','surrender-value', and 'interest accumulating on the tontinepolicy', and tried, as I did so, to analyse the loathing I feltfor him. I came to the conclusion that it was partly due to hispose of doing the whole thing from purely altruistic motives,entirely for my good, and partly because he forced me to face thefact that I was not always going to be young. In an abstractfashion I had already realized that I should in time cease to bethirty, but the way in which Glossop spoke of my sixty-fifthbirthday made me feel as if it was due tomorrow. He was a man witha manner suggestive of a funeral mute suffering from suppressedjaundice, and I had never before been so weighed down with a senseof the inevitability of decay and the remorseless passage of time.

　　I could feel my hair whitening.

　　A need for solitude became imperative; and, murmuring somethingabout thinking it over, I escaped from the room.

　　Except for my bedroom, whither he was quite capable of followingme, I had no refuge but the grounds. I unbolted the front door andwent out.

　　It was still freezing, and, though the stars shone, the trees grewso closely about the house that it was too dark for me to see morethan a few feet in front of me.